South America (Future of The World)
South America is one of the great successes in isolation and biodiversity. Three million years ago, during the Great American Interchange, this biodiversity soon spread to the rest of the world. But as time went on, these species went extinct in foreign lands. South America will soon see the greatest inflow of mammals the world has ever seen, and while these mammals go extinct in the rest of the world, South America is oblivious of the rising supercontinent of Borealia, and more importantly, of that the rest of the world is dominated by reptiles. Five Million Years Later During the remainder of the ice age, the interchange is mostly coming into South America, and all of the endemic South American fauna stays endemic. The jungles of the Amazon have been downsized, and the rest of South America is a mix of grasslands and tundra. Amazon Floodplains The Amazon rainforest is now localised to the floodplains of the river, meaning that the true Amazon rainforest lies solely in a small stretch of northern Brazil. The floodplain is smaller due to the drying of some of the more distant tributaries in ice age conditions. However, another rainforest, and another river system have risen: the drainage basin of the Great Columbian River. An overflow of water into Lake Titicaca 3 million years in the future meant that a overflow proxy had to be created. Over the next two million years, this robbed the Amazon of inflow water, carrying much of this water into a new Great Columbian River flowing to the Pacific Ocean just west of the Isthmus of Panama. A new rainforest sprouted up, covering much of Columbia and parts of Venezuela and Brazil. The swift kingbird, Tyrannus aerobaticus, is a small tyrant flycatcher native to the Amazon and Great Columbian rainforests. Reaching about 10 cm in length, this bright yellow kingbird is a swift flyer, and it needs this to defend itself from the swooping eagles and hawks which prey on it and its kin. The swift kingbird has long plumage, a result of sexual selection, and males fan their feathers in a mating ritual. Ornate quetzals, Pharomachrus ornatus, are an excellent example of the handicap theory of evolution. Inheriting the already ornate tail, crest, and plumage of their ancestors; the ornate quetzal took this a step further and has a tail twice as long as its ancestors, a crest like a Steller's jay, and plumage as thick as peafowl (without the fanning tail, however). They have nearly every colour in the rainbow in their coat. This results in a near inability to fly, but since the handicap theory states that an animal must be very fit to survive with a handicap, the ornate quetzal naturally has an advantage. It may be a unique trait among birds, and that is the ability to huddle together in a formation so that they look like a giant bird, not a collection of quetzals. While some of the duller predators may be tricked, falcons are not so easily fooled, and they are the ornate quetzal's most common predator. Out of all mammalian predators which could reach South America, it was the fisher, Martes pennanti, which did. This originated with an urbanisation of the species, but as humans eventually retreated to space, it was left on its own. While it would be expected to go extinct after a loss of habitat, this left the tropical marten, Martes omnivora, as one of the most adaptable carnivores in the world. After going south to cities like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, the tropical marten eventually settled to the west in the Amazon rainforest. There, it preys on fish and insects, and also eats much of the lush green vegetation. The tropical marten is absent from the Great Columbian rainforest. The delta capybara, Hydrochoeris hydrochaeris juxtamare, is a genetically distinct population of capybaras which inhabits the Amazon River delta. The delta capybara has been isolated from the rest of South America because of a deep basin which formed within 200 kilometers of the delta. Unable to cross the barrier, the delta capybara is a conservative population, while all other capybara populations have become nimble and long-legged. Guanacolopes, Lama antilopis, are a newly evolved species of South American camelid. While the inflow of bovids continues, such endemic species hold them back. While the guanacolope has the basic wild camelid bodily shape, its most interesting feature are ossicone-like horns on the top of its head, making it vaguely reminiscent of an okapi. It is one of the most nimble artiodactyls in South America, easily outrunning other species like caprines. The guanacolopes are mainly preyed on by big cats, especially jaguars, but even for fast-running jaguars the guanacolope is hard to catch. A species that made it across from central to south America was the American Black Bear. The bears of South America evolved into the Barbaloot bear, Ursus artagus . It's name is derived from the fictional animals in Dr. Seuss's book "The Lorax". Standing little more than a meter and a half in height. They primarily eat fruit and leaves in the treetops, but will occasionally raid a bird's nest or at night come down form the trees and scavenge off of the carrion left by moonlions and jaguars. Southern Chilean Tundra The expansion of the icecaps made the cold southern tip of South America expand and eventually take up most of the land from as the name implies from Chile and across Argentina and in the far parts of Paraguay. The animals in this arctic habitat have had to make extreme adaptations to cope with the weather. While most would think of this place as being barren, it like South America itself is a biodiverse land filled with many familiar, but at the same time unfamiliar creatures.